Teaching & Learning: Creative Writing

In the fall of 2019, the instructor for the course I was TAing asked me whether I’d like to present a small lecture to the class. Although at that point the extent of my personal experience with lecturing was instructing a dozen middle schoolers at a summer camp, I knew this would be a valuable opportunity to develop as a teacher. I agreed, and began charting out my first lecture.

I doubt it will come as much of a surprise that writing that first lecture with no prior experience was, in fact, pretty difficult. But the process taught me much about how to present a lecture in a university classroom setting. If you’re a new TA faced with the prospect of preparing your first lecture, I hope these notes will be of some use.

Topic

It’s hard to start writing a lecture if you don’t know what you’re lecturing on. Your instructor might have already selected your topic in advance, but I’ve also worked with instructors who let TAs select their own topics.

The topic of the lecture I gave was assigned to me based on my current line of work—indie video game writing—which filled a niche that had been vacant in the course. But if I had been able to choose a topic, I would have made the same choice. In my view, lecturing on a subject within my experience offered two major benefits—first, it let me speak on a subject I was already very familiar with, which is great for mustering confidence when you’ve got a bad case of stage fright; and second, it meant that the students would (hopefully) be getting a more useful lecture, one grounded in practical experience.

As the instructor told me while I was outlining, the students are there because they want to get something for themselves out of the lecture. If you can offer something unique, like your personal perspective and expertise, then everyone benefits.

Visual Aids

Regardless of what you end up presenting on, I think visual aids are invaluable. Almost every classroom at UBC has a projector on hand, so slideshows, like a Powerpoint or Prezi, tend to be the most common form of visual component.

The best advice I’ve heard is to avoid letting your slideshow make your voice redundant. If the slides contain everything you say aloud, the audience will simply read the information off the slides and stop paying attention by the time you get around to saying it. It’s more useful if the slides focus on the key concepts that the audience will want to take away; if you were taking notes as you listened to the lecture, what would you write down?

Aesthetically, there are two main schools of thought on how to design a slideshow: stylized, with a touch of decoration to keep it visually engaging; or minimalist, with no decoration, in order to focus on clear presentation of the information. I’ve seen both looks executed well, and I don’t think either is better than the other. That said, I did go with plain white text on a black background for my presentation, with the hope of making the slideshow easy to both produce and read.

Script and notes

During my first TA orientation, one of the instructors remarked that he usually had his TAs throw out their notecards before presenting—a fact that drew a nervous laugh from the new TAs in the room, myself included.

For this lecture, my initial plan was to write a very polished script, commit it to memory as well as I could through rehearsals, and recapitulate it in class roughly as written with the aid of notecards. While I didn’t want to come across like I was reading from a teleprompter, the prospect of potentially needing to improvise in front of a crowd terrified me. I was confident that a thorough script would help me avoid this problem, and this confidence lasted right up until the moment when I stood at the podium, glanced down at my notes, and realized I actually wasn’t going to have any time to reference them.

But, as it turned out, knowing what to say without a script was really a non-issue. Although I couldn’t reference the words I’d originally written for my script, the process of outlining my ideas and drafting the slideshow meant that I’d already given a lot of thought to every slide and to the sequence of concepts, and the rehearsals I’d done prior to giving the lecture helped it stick in my memory. When I had to talk about a slide, I didn’t need to consult the notecards to know what my thoughts were on the subject or what to say. Although I’m not sure I’d recommend abandoning your notecards entirely, I don’t feel that they’re necessary for delivering a lecture successfully. Developing a clear vision for what needs to be said and then rehearsing it can serve just as well.

Conclusion

Despite my initial concerns, I feel my first lecture ended up going fairly well—and certainly better than I had thought it would when I was going into it. Preparation was the key to success, more so than comfort with public speaking or prior experience as an instructor. This term, I plan to give a revised version of the lecture to the class, hopefully with fewer nerves and no notecards.

Daunting as it was, presenting that first lecture was a fantastic opportunity and a lot of fun as well. If you have the chance to prepare a lecture of your own, I hope you’ll consider it!

“This is such a crazy time of year!” said every UBC MFA student, at every time of year. Will things ever calm down?! It seems like they won’t. It’s hard to maintain a creative practice at times like these! The only thing to do is … keep going.

Austin Kleon’s latest book, Keep Going, offers tips on doing just that … maintaining a creative practice even when your head is spinning with your endless to-do list. Here are a few takeaways from this tiny, inspiring book! (Kleon also has a newsletter, which you can sign up for here.)

1. Kleon starts out with the same advice that we’ve all received 1000 times, and that most of us have a very, very hard time sticking to: FIGURE OUT A DAILY PRACTICE, already, and consider every day a fresh chance to stick to it.

Most likely, you’re a writer because writing offers you a way to derive meaning from this confusing, difficult, unpredictable life. As Kleon says, “The only thing we can really control is what we spend our days on. What we work on, and how hard we work on it.” As Oprah would say, “This very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.” And as the cast of Rent would say, “No day but tooooooooodaaaaaaaaay!”

“the Muse is ready to surprise me if I show up every day and say, ‘Wanna hang out?’”

2. Create a “bliss station” … a magic space AND / OR a magic time when you can get work done. Your magic time could be the early morning (a time many writers swear by, when minds are fresh and emails haven’t yet started piling up in your inbox), the late night, or anywhere in between. And your magic space could be your desk, kitchen, table, or a favourite coffee shop … but wherever and whenever it happens, the bliss station is a space where your creative work takes priority.

This is mine:

3. In Kleon’s words, “Forget the noun, do the verb.” So … forget about “being a writer.” Just write. And be at play in your work as much as you can.

Remember the way you wrote in high school, or even earlier? Think back to that very first poem or story. You probably weren’t worried about what your peers or teachers would think, about whether your work was publishable, about whether you were somehow embarrassing yourself. Back then, the work didn’t even feel like work — it felt like play. So do what you can to recapture that magic now. This could mean seeking out new experiences and materials … write in rainbow markers, make a collage, cut up the words and rearrange them. See what sparks. Teaching undergrads can also help you connect with that magical creative bubble … when you’re marking, see if you can remember what it felt like to write a story / poem / script for the very first time.

4. Make gifts.

Kleon makes three points here.

i. Protect your valuables. I’ll share this quotation, which MIGHT BE CONTROVERSIAL: “When you start making a living from your work, resist the urge to monetize every single bit of your creative practice. Be sure there’s at least a tiny part of you that’s off-limits to the marketplace. Some little piece that you keep for yourself.”

ii. Ignore the numbers, aka the online metrics of engagement with your work. Forget counting the likes on your tweets! Write more poems (or stories, articles, songs …) instead! Think less about quantity (of faves, shares, sales) and more about quality … you are the only one who knows whether you’re producing your best work, so make yourself proud.

iii. Where there is no gift, there is no art.

Feeling alienated from your gifts lately? Sometimes the answer is … making a gift. Draw your partner a comic, write a poem for your best friend or a bedtime story for your child. Some of the most beautiful art ever made started out as specific gifts for specific people.

Last semester, Sheryda made tarot cards for each of her poetry students … so beautiful!

5. To find the ordinary, pay attention to the extraordinary.

Again, there are three important points Kleon makes here:

i. You have everything you need already to create your best work. Conditions are never perfect, but they’re always right.

ii. Slow down. As you go about your day, pay attention, and record what you see.

iii. Pay attention to what you pay attention to. If you’re a notebook keeper, reread your old notebooks from a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago (or reread your tweets, or your blog, or scroll back through your camera roll) … what were you paying attention to, and how has it shown up in your art and in your life?

6. Remember that writing is for life (not the other way around).

In the day-to-day of TAing, completing assignments, writing response memos, etc., it’s easy to forget why we wanted to write in the first place … writing makes the world, and our own lives, more beautiful.

7. You are allowed to change your mind.

We live in an age when people love certainty, but good writing, and good teaching, often means being a little uncertain. Think back to the first story you wrote, or the first seminar you led … I bet you’ve grown a lot since then, and you’ll grow just as much in the future. As scary as change can seem, it’s not a threat; it’s an opportunity.

8. When in doubt, tidy up.

Kleon suggests that you shouldn’t be afraid to let your bliss station get a bit messy, because chances are, when you’re tidying the mess, you’ll find something beautiful.

I love this quotation: “Creativity is about connections, and connections are not made by siloing everything off into its own space. New ideas are formed by interesting juxtapositions, and interesting juxtapositions happen when things are out of place.”

Reminds me of this poetry collage, created by Sheryda’s workshop last semester:

9. Demons hate fresh air.

Bogged down in marking? Can’t get the words right? Struggling to revise your story for the millionth time? Take a break and go for a walk! Fresh air makes everything better.

10. Plant your garden.

Remember that, like everything else in life, your artistic practice has its own seasons and rhythms. Is this your creative winter? Be patient — spring always comes.

An image created by Kleon:

Kleon has also written two other books about creativity, Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work. Check them out if you’re in need of inspo! And no matter what you do … keep going!

10-minute learning activities are effective strategies for creating connection, inviting meaningful disruption, and generating energy in any creative writing classroom.

Baggage Switch

The instructions for this are simple: in a piece of pre-generated piece of writing, have students circle all the verbs (or nouns, or both!) and write them out on a separate scrap of paper. Then, ask them to pass their list to the person beside them. Students re-write the piece of writing replacing their verbs with those they received from their neighbour.

I adapted this exercise from Noah Eli Gordon. A quote from his essay:

“What I stress here is the deliberate avoidance of those verbs which would simply replicate the poem’s original statement. If your line reads, “I climbed up the mountain,” then replacing climbed with walked isn’t doing enough work. Try shuddered or sank or roped…”

A brief reflection, depending on the level of your group, could include what it feels like to work with someone else’s language, other ways of expanding their vocabulary,  or what figurative potential emerged through this exercise.

10-minute learning activities are effective strategies for creating connection, inviting meaningful disruption, and generating energy in any creative writing classroom.

The Story of My Name

• • Ask students to pair up and take turns sharing the stories of their names
  • When taking the role of listener, the student’s job is to record as many details of the story they’re being told as possible.

For my Introduction to Poetry class, once we have these gathered materials, I ask students to create a collaborative list poem. Each line begins with the phrase:

My name is…

I prompt them to complete the line with the following information:

• • a detail from the story you’ve just been told
  • something you noticed on the way to class today
  • an object that is meaningful to you
  • overheard lyric or expression stuck in your head
  • another memorable detail about a name
  • something you made as a child that you liked

Here’s what a poem might look like once the exercise is through:

My name is passed down from my mother’s mother’s mother.
My name is the sound of a truck backing up.
My name is a hand-painted rock.
My name is don’t text me tell me straight to my face.
My name is not the one I was born with.
My name is a pink papier-mâché heron balancing on a spindly leg.

This is an endlessly-adaptable exercise with materials that could be drawn up into any kind of writing: a character sketch, a flash fiction, a monologue, etc.

It’s important to stress to students that they don’t overthink the prompts or the process, even when confusion arises. Once they are assured that what they’re doing is okay, they make really unexpected leaps.

It’s that time of the year again: student assignments are in, your own assignments are due, and you’ve got a day job thrown into the mix. I’ve been marking essays for years, and assessment period is the worst. But not to worry! If you are new to this, here are some basic tips for making the experience as efficient and painless as possible:

Make Plans: Be sure your professor is clear at the beginning of each semester about when assignments are due from students, and when corresponding marks are due from you. This will enable you to integrate marking into your overall schedule and set aside time for it in advance.

Mark by Genre: If you are TA-ing a mixed-genre class, mark assignments by genre. Assessing one genre at a time reduces the need to readjust your reading lens with each new assignment, making the process more efficient. It also helps you get a sense of the general standard of submissions more quickly, which will help you understand what an average submission looks like.

Keep Rubrics Handy: I always have assessment rubrics visible when I mark. It helps me remember what I am supposed to be looking out for, and prevents me from veering towards my own personal tastes. It is also a great help when it comes to creating comments: ensuring that the bulk of your comments respond to points listed in the rubric not only saves you (a lot of) think-time, but also safeguards you should a student disagree with a grade they are given.

When Possible, Minimize Typing: My favourite feature on Canvas (besides the little window that shows you the mean average grade at any given time) is its ability to save comments that recur across assignments. If you have a standard opening greeting or word of encouragement, consider saving it in the drop-down options, so that you can click on it when you want to use it, instead of repeatedly typing it out each time. Additionally, if you notice that you’re repeating certain comments about craft or formatting because a certain kind of mistake is common, you can save and re-use those comments as well!

Value Your Time: Keep track of your hours. If you are exceeding the hours allocated to you for each assignment, check in with your fellow TAs to see if their experience is similar – if it is not, you might be allocating more time to individual assignments than is actually necessary. If this is the case, consider being strict with yourself and marking with a timer. (E.g., I literally set an hourly timer to ensure that I complete a certain number of essays per hour!) If all the TAs in a single class are overrunning hours, get together and let your instructor know – they may need to rethink the scope of the rubric, or provide you with overtime.

Create Conditions That Work For You: Do you thrive on short bursts of energy? Do you prefer solitary or communal marking? Identify what works for you and do your best to create those conditions for yourself. For example, I like to work for long periods of time without breaks because I find that repetition increases my efficiency, and helps me maintain standard consistency. In addition, before I start marking anything, I create a table containing columns for student names, rubric marks, and final marks. I print this out and fill in grades as I go along so that I have a tactile record accessible to me at all times (I’m a semi-tactile learner) and a visual record of my own marking standards (which helps maintain standard consistency). These tactics work for me – identify and make possible what works for you.

All the best for assessment period! I wish you patience, god-speed, and exceptional submissions!

I write and draw every day. I’ve been working on building a daily practice for about three years, and it’s been consistent for about a year now. This discipline has been hard-won after decades of procrastination and neglecting my craft. And I expect it to fluctuate as I continue: at some points I will need to do longer stretches each day, and at some points I will be able to do next to nothing. But I want to try to do at least a tiny bit each day as much as I possibly can for as long as I possibly can.

Artists step away from their creative practice for lots of reasons. For me, it’s been a whole range of things. One that I think a lot of you can relate to is a lifelong struggle with severe anxiety. In the past, when I didn’t have many tools or skills for managing this condition, it created long stretches of time in which I felt frozen, unable to do any creative work at all. Another barrier to creative work has been painful life events (like illness or death in the family), during which I haven’t had the energy or focus to do much besides cope with the situation. And then of course there’s work, and spending time with family and friends, and the daily list of mundane to-do’s that can crowd out any time for writing, drawing or other creative expression.

My second book, published in September, took me eight years to finish. This is partly because the research, writing, drawing and revisions took a long time. And partly because I spent many months and years of that time dealing with all the factors I’ve just listed.

I’ve come to believe that establishing a daily practice earlier in my life would have helped me immensely, both with my creative projects and with my mental health. Even a tiny bit of work every day is better than long stretches in which I’m totally separated from my writing and drawing. Some days this looks like hours of productivity. Other days it’s a few minutes late at night, when I want to go to sleep but am determined to get my daily work done.

Daily practice makes me feel that I am still connected to the artistic part of myself, even if the work I’m doing isn’t connected to the project I’m focused on right now, even if it’s something I end up recycling or hiding or tearing up in frustration. Daily practice builds my skills, keeps me thinking and exploring and experimenting. Daily practice lets me connect with a joyful, constructive energy even on days that completely suck in every other way.

So — here are some things you might try, gleaned from my own experience and others’, in order to keep your creative practice going even when times are tough and the world is conspiring against you.

Keep it small: Commit to doing something each day, and try committing to less than you think you can really do. So, for example, “I will write/draw for 3 minutes a day.”

Make yourself a workspace: Whether it’s a cozy chair or a fully-equipped ergonomic work station or a table at your favourite cafe, it helps to have a location where you can sit down and work for your three minutes without complication.

Use a timer: I think this helps give a sense of how much you can get done in a short chunk of time — three minutes can be surprisingly long — and it also helps set a boundary around your work time.

Get a buddy or two: Maybe you sit down and work together. Or maybe you just check in with each other at regular intervals. I have used a shared blog and shared Google docs for this purpose. You can set your goals and report to your buddy(ies) about your progress. They can cheer you on and remind you of your deadlines.

Build up your daily practice to a longer period over time if you like, or maybe just promise yourself three minutes a day minimum, knowing that some days you will do way more. But the three minutes remains non-negotiable.

If you miss a day, just start over the next day. Don’t waste time beating yourself up.

If you want more ideas about maintaining your creative practice, I highly recommend Jessica Abel’s work. She has a book (Growing Gills) and blog posts and exercises and questionnaires you can fill out (we love those, right?). She also regularly runs a course called Creative Focus. I took it a few years ago and it was very helpful. She is also a fantastic cartoonist and comics teacher.

When I came and spoke with the TAs on November 4, we did an exercise that is influenced by the work I did with Jessica Abel as well as a book called Taming Your Gremlin by Rick Carson, a classic self-help book that’s been in print since 1984.

Here’s the exercise: Get two index cards, or two smallish pieces of paper and a pen. Don’t use a pencil; you shouldn’t spend any time erasing. Think about all the negative messages you have in your head about your creative work (you can’t do it, you’re not good, etc.). Set a timer for three minutes, and on one index card draw the jerk who’s saying these things. Maybe it’s a person, maybe it’s a monster, maybe it’s a blob. But give it form and personality. Add a speech balloon if you feel so moved. Don’t stop drawing until the timer stops. Now, think about a character who would talk back to that first monster, stick up for you and your work. If that’s hard to do, pretend you’re doing it on behalf of someone you love, not yourself. Then set the timer for three minutes again and draw that character and give it some words.

I drew my jerk monster years ago and kept it on my desk for a long time. I felt like I could let go of some of my own self-criticism when I knew that guy was taking care of it. You can see him in this article by Jessica Abel, wherein she also discusses the amazing work of Lucy Bellwood, who drew her demons for 100 days.

I hope that some of this helps. Please know that I feel like a total beginner at this, and am always worried that I won’t be able to maintain it. But I do it anyway! Whereas in the past I wouldn’t have bothered starting, knowing that I was destined for failure. Know what I’m saying?

Here’s a comic I made some years ago that captures some of these ideas. It’s about comics, but I think you could apply it to anything!

When wondering how to go about giving students helpful feedback, we might begin by considering the most helpful types of feedback that we ourselves have received. Here are some examples of valuable feedback that TAs have received on their own work:

– Suggestions for structure without prescription.

– “Don’t quit!”

– Advice on sentence- and paragraph-level composition and structure.

– Feedback that honoured my voice and what I was trying to do; general advice around not being precious / being willing to let go of pre-conceived ideas.

– Highlighting what worked, what connected with the reader, what to emphasize, where to build off.

– Noting specific places where there’s confusion or the intent isn’t coming through.

– Specific reasons for issues with realism or character believability.

– To read widely!

– Provocative questions that open the text for me as the writer.

What is the most valuable feedback that you have received? Share it in the comments!